Bee Thousand
Guided By Voices’ seventh album is a cornucopia of Who-style song-sketches played with the attention span (and beer budget) of a few old friends in a musty garage. Bringing the sprawl of their earlier albums into serious focus, *Bee Thousand* fits 20 songs into 37 minutes—a hooky, imaginative, and charmingly rough-around-the-edges experience. Despite their nerdy, obscure subject matter, the band’s songs can be surprisingly touching: Check out “I Am a Scientist,” which turns its conceit into a parable about the world.
The cult of indie rock thrives on the unexpected discovery, and in 1994 Guided by Voices were just the sort of musical phenomenon no one figured was still out there -- 30-something rock obsessives cranking out fractured guitar-driven pop tunes in a laundry room.
Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand review: Enigmatic, catchy and timeless, Bee Thousand is pretty much the definition of a classic.